Our Visit to Les Jardins de Métis, Part 1–The Long Walk

For those of us who have been digging and dividing perennials, weeding, and dragging hoses around in the heat, gardening might seem to be an odd hobby for Elsie Reford's doctor to recommend while she recovered from surgery.

Elsie Stephen Reford 1897. Photo by William Notman& Son from the Collection of the Musée McCord D Histoire D' Canadienne.

The oddity of the doctor's advice is very much about class and the time period in which Elsie lived. Up until the time of her surgery, Elsie had spent her summers horseback riding, hunting and salmon fishing at Estevan Lodge, the country estate on the Gaspé Peninsula she had inherited from her wealthy uncle Sir George Stephen.

The doctor counselling Elsie to take up gardening in her fifty-second year wasn't suggesting she herself do the hard physical labour that gardening demands. Instead, he was suggesting that she might direct and manage a team of hardy fellows to do the difficult work of creating a garden for her.

Elsie Stephen Reford 1895. Photo by William Notman& Son from the Collection of the Musée McCord D Histoire D' Canadienne.

Elsie Reford was the eldest daughter of a humble, but hard-working Irish immigrant who had risen in the ranks to become the president of the Lake of the Woods Milling Company. After being educated in Montreal and later at finishing schools in Paris, Dresden and Germany, Elsie returned to Quebec ready to take her place in society.

She married Robert Wilson Reford, the eldest son of a prominent member of the Montreal shipping industry. She had two sons and busied herself with a number of civic, social and philanthropic causes.

A view of Estevan Lodge circa 1942.

The house as it looks today.

The view of the Gaspé Peninsula at the end of the pathway seen in the previous picture.

When Estevan Lodge passed from her uncle to her, Elsie had the land surveyed and fenced. The lodge she inherited was a large, rambling one-story building that Sir George had built to accommodate hunting and fishing parties in country comfort.

There is a website devoted to Elsie Reford's life that may be of interest. It has pictures like the one above showing Elsie fishing on the Métis River. Elsie loved nature and the great outdoors. ElsieReford.ca

Sadly during Sir George's lifetime, he had little opportunity to visit the remote property, so he opened it every summer to family and close friends. As a girl and later as the wife of a wealthy businessman, Elsie and her family spent part of each summer at her uncle's estate.

To complete the changes to the lodge, Elsie had a second story added to accommodate her family, guests and staff. In the end, it was not the prettiest of summer homes, but it did have a number of grand rooms and a generous covered porch with long rows of Adirondack chairs that awaited visiting seasonal guests.

For a number of years, Estevan Lodge remained a simple summer retreat, but with her doctor's encouragement, Elsie began to toy with the idea of adding a garden along a stream that flowed through the property.

The very early beginnings of The Long Walk (from ElsieReford.ca)

Creating a garden well north of her home in Montreal was bound to be a difficult task. The soil was poor and the climate was harsh. Nurseries were hundreds of miles to the south, so even getting plants would not be easy. Nevertheless, making a garden was a challenge that Elsie embraced.  In the first few years, she had garden beds carved out of the surrounding conifer forest, banked the stream with stones, built steps, bridges and a lookout.

Then to link the lodge with the garden along the stream, she created a 90-metre double herbaceous border flanked by dry stone walls that became known as "The Long Walk". It is in this grand garden we will begin our tour.

I should mention before we go much further that I visited the garden on July 18th. Normally the flowers I saw blooming in July might flower in mid-June here in Southern Ontario. This will give you a better idea of how far north this garden is. The gardening season at Reford Gardens is jam-packed into a few short months.

Dianthus growing in front of the dry stone wall that borders The Long Walk.

Walking from Estevan Lodge to The Long Walk I came across a patch of the most delicate Dianthus. I thought I'd share them with you before we head into the main garden.

Here is our first view of The Long Walk. The sheer size of the flowerbeds that flank the walkway are impressive. The dark green of the Quebec forest makes our destination feel a bit mysterious.

This huge garden was meant to be Elsie's horticultural showpiece. The only straight line in the garden, it offered a view north to the St Lawrence River and beyond.

To make up for the soil's deficiencies, Elsie had peat and sand mixed with gravel gathered from the beaches along the Gaspé. She bartered salmon from the Métis River in exchange for leaves from a neighbour's grove (the leaves shredded to make compost).

Elsie ordered plants from nurseries across Canada and in the United Kingdom. As her knowledge of plants grew more confident, she began collections of her favourites; peonies, roses, gentians, poppies, azaleas and primula.

In the fall of 1933, she ordered no less than 830 peonies. Common perennials were pushed out in favour of more exotic choices like the blue meconopsis for which the garden is famous.

Not an inch of ground is wasted! All the perennials are packed in together for maximum show.
 This dense planting would also deter weeds.




Closeups from the lowest step in the two flower borders (left to right): Thyme, Salvia, light purple Campanula and pink Dianthus.

As in traditional English gardens, the plantings were stepped, with perennials arranged from shortest along the edges of the pathway to tallest at the back of each flowerbed. 

A dwarf Campanula from the lowest step in the two flower borders.

Starting on the lowest step are plants like Creeping or Moss Phlox, Dianthus (Pinks), Campanula, Salvia and Creeping Thyme. Good drainage would be essential to help plants like Dianthus and Thyme make it through the rigours of a Quebec winter.

On the next step, there is a wide assortment of annuals that contribute to summer-long colour. These annuals include plants like Snapdragons, Salvia, annual Phlox, Lavatera and Sweet William.

In amongst the annuals are beautiful roses primarily in shades of pink.

Pink Lavatera

Blue Floss Flower (Ageratum), Annual Salvia and pink Snapdragons.

Pink roses in a long row (Sorry could not find an identifier for these particular roses).

Mallow, Malope trifida 

Annual Phlox, Phlox drummondii 'Isabellina' and Rosa 'Warwick Castle'

Hybrid Tea Rose, Rosa 'Peace'

On the next tier, there is a glorious row of pink peonies.  I felt very fortunate to have arrived at their peak.

Two lines of deep blue delphinium tower above the peonies. These stately flowers are set off by the green backdrop of deciduous trees that flank the flowerbeds.

Smitten by the success of her early gardening efforts, Elsie began to spend most of her days in her garden from May through mid-October. While she did little of the heaviest manual work, she was the garden's designer and manager, choosing the plants and deciding where they should be placed. She weeded, planted and deadheaded flowers. 

Exiled to Montreal in the winter, she poured through garden catalogues and read the latest gardening books. At first, her plant choices were timid, but quickly enough, she developed favourites and ordered plants from further afield. 

The gardens at Estevan Lodge grew in size and scope to accommodate Elsie's burgeoning plant collection. Botanical gardens have a long history in Europe, but less so in North America. The emergence of a cultured upper class in the mid-to-late nineteenth century changed this. Gardens became a place where plants were collected and displayed. Elsie's own father had amassed a large number of orchids in the glass conservatory of her childhood home in Montreal.

Lilies were Elsie's absolute favourites. She loved their fragrance, their exotic flowers and even the challenge of growing them in a climate where they had never been attempted. 

When Elsie first began to grow lilies, they were relatively unknown in that part of Canada. She had to order lilies from specialized growers in England. Before her bulbs were first planted, Elsie had three-foot trenches dug. They were then and filled with a mix of organic matter, wood ash, bonemeal, fine gravel and lime grit to improve the drainage.

Most of the lilies were still tightly closed when I visited the garden, but I am sure they would put on a spectacular display well into August.

While I thought The Long Walk was absolutely beautiful, it did feel very much like a traditional English garden had dropped from the sky into the Quebec landscape. Pretty as it was, I couldn't help but feel the garden was a little out of step with its Canadian setting.

In an upcoming post, we'll head into the conifer forest to see the garden that Elsie created along the stream bank. This woodland garden was my favourite part of Les Jardins de Métis (Reford Gardens).

A Little Taste of our Most Recent Adventures

In the past, we have always vacationed in late May or June, but in the last two years, we have taken a mid-summer holiday. It's nice to escape the 30-degree heat and humidity of Toronto and lie low somewhere cooler in the middle of July.

The challenge is to leave the garden to fend for itself in the heat of summer. The weeks proceeding our trip this July were, therefore, busy ones. I tried my darndest to have everything planted in the ground and the weeds somewhat under control. I gathered most of my container plantings into a group huddle and hubby set up a timer to water them once a day.

Bags packed and we hit the road!

The ambitious plan was to make the sixteen plus hour drive home from Toronto to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I very much wanted to visit with family and my Dad in particular. He's been really missing my Mom who passed away last fall.

The long drive was bound to be a bit gruelling as a vacation, so we divided it into smaller, more manageable chunks. The first day we dove to Cornwall, Ontario just outside of Montreal (a 5 hr. drive). We ended the day with a lovely dinner on the patio of the hotel where we stayed.

The next day it was on to Edmunston in northern New Brunswich (a very long 6-8 hrs). My favourite part of the drive was watching the sun dip behind the hills that flank the St Lawrence River. The view was absolutely breathtaking!

Unfortunately, we dawdled in a few antique shops along the way and that put us into northern New Brunswick after dark. At night, the densely forested hills seemed to press in on the highway. There were very few cars on the road–just big transports and logging trucks in a rush to get wherever it was that they needed to go.

What really unnerved me however was the constant warnings about the dangers of moose crossing the highway. The last thing I need to see was a big, lumbering moose staring quizzically into my headlights! That our GPS system got us lost trying to find the hotel at the end of the evening didn't help. It was about midnight by the time we dropped into bed exhausted.

The journey across northern New Brunswick on day 3 of our trip.

In the early evening of day three, we stopped at a roadside restaurant and had fish & chips overlooking the Atlantic ocean.

The next day I had the bright idea to cross to the Atlantic side of New Brunswick and head down the coast. The drive to Moncton, N.B. seemed short in comparison to the previous day (just 4-5 hrs) and it seemed like a nice idea to get in a bit of pretty scenery. What a mistake this turned out to be! The rough road I set us on was through an uninhabited section of densely forested highway with more moose warnings. We saw very few cars and not a single house, store or gas station for several hours! Again another late-day ensued.

The easiest segment was the last. We arrived home in Halifax by mid-afternoon on the fourth day.

Much of the time spent in Halifax was family time. We took Dad out on his motorized scooter for daily walks. On one of these strolls, we ran into a turtle who posed briefly for a picture. We also visited a nesting osprey eagle (or fish eagle as they are sometimes called).

I included the ugly electric pole just to give you some perspective as to how high the 

osprey nest sat above the ground.

Considering I don't have a telephoto lens, my camera did fairly well to capture this amazing bird. Read more about osprey conservation efforts here.

The indignant turtle.

We took my sister shopping, to the big Framer's Market in Halifax and went hunting for shells out at St. Lawrence beach (the freezing waters of the North Atlantic are only suitable for the most intrepid of swimmers). 

Looking inland from St Lawrence Beach.

 Donna and Duff on their deck.

We did manage to spend an afternoon with our friends Donna and Duff Evers. It is always such a treat to see Donna's garden!

A view of the terrace.

Pink peony with Astilbe and what I believe is a Japanese Iris in the distance.

I was also able to visit with Jacquie Jordan and see how her new garden is coming along (You may remember the post on her previous garden from earlier this year). Jacquie had lost her little dog named Valentine, but happily, we got to meet the newest member of the family.

Jacquie's new pup.

Jacob's Ladder or Polemonium

The property is smaller and much more manageable than her previous garden. The front yard generally gets full sun, while the back garden finds a home on the edge of shady woodland. It was impressive to see how much Jacquie had accomplished in just over a year!

A Japanese Maple in Jacquie's garden.

The back of Jacquie's property is a woodland overlooking a lake.

We made a spur-of-the-moment visit to Harbourview Daylilies, a nursery and display garden specializing in daylilies and Japanese Irises. Set into the rocky hillside, the nursery offers fantastic views of the Musquodoboit Harbour.

 A more formal part of the garden.

 These Lupins had gone to seed, but I thought the fuzzy seedpods were beautiful.

I am sure lots of topsoil was brought in to create the gardens on this rocky hillside garden. Beyond the trees, you can see the Musquodoboit Harbour.

Ferns love the abundant rainfall.

We varied our return trip to work in a visit to Les Jardin de Métis or Reford Gardens as it is known in English. To get there, we went up through New Brunswick and crossed through a mountain pass to reach the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. North of Quebec city, highway 132 follows a winding river through the rocky cliffs. Again the views were amazing!

We stopped for the night in nearby Mont-Joli and had dinner at a restaurant overlooking the St. Lawrence. One of the town's more unusual landmarks was an artwork called "Le Grand Rassemblement" (The Great Gathering in English) by a painter and sculptor Marcel Gagnon. This piece features one hundred life-sized figures emerging from the inky-blue waters of the river.

The house ay Reford Gardens was once a summer hunting and fishing lodge.

The porch with plenty of casual seating for relaxing vacationers.

Seeing Reford Gardens, a traditional English-style garden famous for its blue poppies, has been on my wishlist for years. The garden was created at the summer home of Elsie Reford, the wife of a wealthy Montreal shipping magnate. This private garden was first opened to the public in 1962.

I promise to do a more detailed post in the future, but here is a little preview of this magnificent garden.

 Feathery Dianthus

The garden called "The Long Walk".

As well as more traditional flowerbeds, there is a large wooded area and shade gardens.

Our trip was not the most relaxing of vacations, but we still had a wonderful time. To mix things up, next summer I think we will plunk ourselves in one place and stay there the whole time!

P.S. There is still a couple of days to enter the latest book draw.